Viskningar och rop (Cries and Whispers) (+ sc); Scener ur ettäktenskap (Scenes from a Marriage) (+ sc, + narration, voice of the photographer) in six episodes: "Oskuld och panik (Innocence and Panic)"; "Kunsten att sopa unter mattan (The Art of Papering over Cracks)"; "Paula"; "Tåredalen (The Vale of Tears)"; "Analfabeterna (The Illiterates)"; "Mitt i natten i ett mörkt hus någonstans i världen (In the Middle of the Night in a Dark House Somewhere in the World)" (shown theatrically in shortened version of 168 minutes)

1977

Das Schlangenei (The Serpent's Egg; Ormens ägg) (+ sc)

1978

Herbstsonate (Autumn Sonata; Höstsonaten) (+ sc)

1979

Fårö-dokument 1979 (Fårö 1979) (+ sc, narration)

1980

Aus dem Leben der Marionetten (From the Life of the Marionettes) (+ sc)

Ingmar Bergman's unique international status as a filmmaker would seem assured on many grounds. His reputation can be traced to such diverse factors as his prolific output of largely notable work (40 features from 1946–82); the profoundly personal nature of his best films since the 1950s; the innovative nature of his technique combined with its essential simplicity, even when employing surrealistic and dream-like treatments (as, for example, in Wild Strawberries and Persona); his creative sensitivity in relation to his players; and his extraordinary capacity to evoke distinguished acting from his regular interpreters, notably Gunnar Björnstrand, Max von Sydow, Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, and Liv Ullmann.

After an initial period of derivative, melodramatic filmmaking largely concerned with bitter man-woman relationships ("I just grabbed helplessly at any form that might save me, because I hadn't any of my own," he confesses in Bergman on Bergman), Bergman reached an initial maturity of style in Summer Interlude and Summer with Monika, romantic studies of adolescent love and subsequent disillusionment. In The Naked Night he used a derelict travelling circus—its proprietor paired with a faithless young mistress and its clown with a faithless middle-aged wife—as a symbol of human suffering through misplaced love and to portray the ultimate loneliness of the human condition, a theme common to much of his work. Not that Bergman's films are all gloom and disillusionment. He has a recurrent, if veiled, sense of humour. His comedies, such as A Lesson in Love and Smiles of a Summer Night, are ironically effective ("You're a gynecologist who knows nothing about women," says a man's mistress in A Lesson in Love), and even in Wild Strawberries the aged professor's relations with his housekeeper offer comic relief. Bergman's later comedies, the Shavian The Devil's Eye and Now About All These Women, are both sharp and fantastic.

"To me, religious problems are continuously alive . . . not . . . on the emotional level, but on an intellectual one," wrote Bergman at the time of Wild Strawberries. The Seventh Seal, The Virgin Spring, Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence lead progressively to the rejection of religious belief, leaving only the conviction that human life is haunted by "a virulent, active evil." The crusading knight of The Seventh Seal who cannot face death once his faith is lost survives only to witness the cruelty of religious persecution. In Bergman's view, faith belongs to the simple-minded and innocent. The Virgin Spring exposes the violence of vengeance in a period of primitive Christianity.

Bergman no longer likes these films, considering them "bogus"; nevertheless, they are excellently made in his highly professional style. Disillusionment with Lutheran denial of love is deep in Winter Light. "In Winter Light I swept my house clean," Bergman has said. Other Bergman films reflect his views on religion as well: the mad girl in Through a Glass Darkly perceives God as a spider, while the ailing sister in The Silence faces death with a loneliness that passes all understanding as a result of the frigid silence of God in the face of her sufferings. In The Face, however, Bergman takes sardonic delight in letting the rationalistic miracle-man suspect in the end that his bogus miracles are in fact genuine.

With Wild Strawberries, Bergman turned increasingly to psychological dilemmas and ethical issues in human and social relations once religion has proved a failure. Above all else, the films suggest, love, understanding, and common humanity seem lacking. The aged medical professor in Wild Strawberries comes through a succession of dreams to realize the truth about his cold and loveless nature. In Persona, the most psychologically puzzling, controversial, yet significant of all Bergman's films—with its Brechtian alienation technique and surreal treatment of dual personality—the self-imposed silence of the actress stems from her failure to love her husband and son, though she responds with horror to the self-destructive violence of the world around her. This latter theme is carried still further in The Shame, in which an egocentric musician attempts non-involvement in his country's war only to collapse into irrational acts of violence himself through sheer panic. The Shame and Hour of the Wolf are concerned with artists who are too self-centered to care about the larger issues of the society in which they live.

"It wasn't until A Passion that I really got to grips with the man-woman relationship," says Bergman. A Passion deals with "the dark, destructive forces" in human nature which sexual urges can inspire. Bergman's later films reflect, he claims, his "ceaseless fascination with the whole race of women," adding that "the film . . . should communicate psychic states." The love and understanding needed by women is too often denied them, suggests Bergman. Witness the case of the various women about to give birth in Brink of Life and the fearful, haunted, loveless family relationships in Cries and Whispers. The latter, with The Shame and The Serpent's Egg, is surely among the most terrifying of Bergman's films, though photographed in exquisite color by Sven Nykvist, his principal cinematographer.

Man-woman relationships are successively and uncompromisingly examined in a series of Bergman films. The Touch shows a married woman driven out of her emotional depth in an extramarital affair; Face to Face, one of Bergman's most moving films, concerns the nervous breakdown of a cold-natured woman analyst and the hallucinations she suffers; and a film made as a series for television (but reissued more effectively in a shortened, re-edited form for the cinema, Scenes from a Marriage) concerns the troubled, long-term love of a professional couple who are divorced but unable to endure separation. Supreme performances were given by Bibi Andersson in Persona and The Touch, and by Liv Ullmann in Cries and Whispers, Scenes from a Marriage and Face to Face. Bergman's later films, made in Sweden or during his period of self-imposed exile, are more miscellaneous. The Magic Flute is one of the best, most delightful of opera-films. The Serpent's Egg is a savage study in the sadistic origins of Nazism, while Autumn Sonata explores the case of a mother who cannot love. Bergman declared his filmmaking at an end with his brilliant, German-made misanthropic study of a fatal marriage, From the Life of the Marionettes, and the semi-autobiographical television series Fanny and Alexander. Swedish-produced, the latter work was released in a re-edited version for the cinema. Set in 1907, Fanny and Alexander is the gentle, poetic story of two years in the lives of characters who are meant to be Bergman's maternal grandparents.

After Fanny and Alexander, Bergman directed After the Rehearsal, a small-scale drama which reflected his growing preoccupation with working in the theater. It features three characters: an aging, womanizing stage director mounting a version of Strindberg's The Dream Play; the attractive, determined young actress who is his leading lady; and his former lover, once a great star but now an alcoholic has-been, who accepts a humiliating bit role in the production.

After the Rehearsal was not Bergman's cinematic swan song. He went on to author two scripts which are autobiographical outgrowths of Fanny and Alexander. The Best Intentions, directed by Bille August, is a compassionate chronicle of ten years in the tempestuous courtship and early marriage of Bergman's parents. His father starts out as an impoverished theology student who is unyielding in his views. His mother is spirited but pampered, the product of an upper-class upbringing. The film also is of note for the casting of Max von Sydow as the filmmaker's maternal grandfather. The actor's presence is most fitting, given the roots of the scenario and his working relationship with Bergman, which dates back to the 1950s.

The Best Intentions was followed by Sunday's Children, directed by Bergman's son Daniel. The film is a deeply personal story of a ten-year-old boy named Pu, who is supposed to represent the young Ingmar Bergman. Pu is growing up in the Swedish countryside during the 1920s. The scenario focuses on his relationship to his minister father and other family members; also depicted is the adult Pu's unsettling connection to his elderly dad.

—Roger Manvell, updated by
Rob Edelman

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Bergman, Ingmar

Ingmar Bergman

I ngmar Bergman is widely regarded as one of the greatest directors in the history of motion pictures. His works are
marked by intense characters, as well as intellectual and symbolic content.

Early life

Ingmar Bergman was born on July 14, 1918, in Uppsala, Sweden, the son of a Lutheran minister who believed in strict discipline for his children. Raised under these circumstances, Bergman developed a love for movies, which he used as an escape from his rigid upbringing. By the age of six Bergman was making his own movies, primitive works that he pieced together from film scraps. A few years later, after seeing his first stage production, Bergman began producing his own plays for a puppet theater.

In 1937 Bergman entered the University of Stockholm, where he became an active member of the student theatrical group. In 1942, after a brilliant production of William Shakespeare's (1564–1616) Macbeth, the aspiring director was appointed to the Swedish Royal Opera. In the years following he divided his talents equally between stage and film efforts.

Film career

In 1945 Bergman directed his first film, Crisis, the story of an unhappy love affair which ends in suicide (taking one's own life). Several films followed closely, but in 1956 Bergman reached the peak of critical and popular praise with The Seventh Seal. The Seventh Seal is a morality (having to do with the difference between wrong and right) play about a knight who, seeking to satisfy his religious doubts and unravel the mystery of the universe, challenges Death to a game of chess. Even Bergman's critics agree that this film has visual daring with great dramatic power.

A year later Bergman directed Wild Strawberries, a touching study of the difference between youth and old age. With his next film, The Magician (1959), Bergman returned to his earlier use of symbolism, where objects or events are used to represent something else. It is the story of a group of wandering magicians and their encounters with otherworldly spirits. The Virgin Spring followed in 1960, as well as several lesser works.

In 1961 Bergman embarked upon his ambitious trilogy (three works), beginning with Through a Glass Darkly, an intense, almost hysterical, study of family violence. The second contribution, Winter Light (1962), presents
the emptiness which follows loss of faith. The final portion, The Silence (1963), explores the problems of noncommunication. The trilogy is concerned with the problem of God's absence rather than His presence, and with the pain stemming from personal isolation rather than the puzzle of human existence itself. It represents Bergman's increasingly complex view of the world.

Later works

This sophistication is also evident in the coldly poetic Persona (1966). This film tells of a bizarre relationship between a young actress who has lapsed into complete silence and the talkative nurse who cares for her. The Hour of the Wolf (1968), about an artist who is haunted by specters (ghosts), marks what some feel is a regrettable return to Bergman's earlier use of mysticism, or a spiritual search.

Due to tax problems Bergman spent much of the 1970s overseas, where he produced work for television in Norway and Germany as well as in Sweden. His major theatrical films of this period include Cries and Whispers (1971) and Autumn Sonata (1978). Highly regarded among the television work are Scenes from a Marriage (1973) and The Magic Flute of the same year.

In 1982 Bergman released one of his most autobiographical (having to do with a person's own life) films, the richly detailed Fanny and Alexander. Announced as his final film, it brings together many different themes from his previous works and is seen as a powerful summary of his life and career. Since Fanny and Alexander Bergman has published an autobiography, The Magic Lantern (1988); a novel, Best Intentions (1989); and has continued to write and direct for Swedish television and theater. Best Intentions was produced from Bergman's script for Swedish television in 1991.

The year 2001 saw the release of Faithless, written by Bergman but directed by actress Liv Ullmann (1939–). Bergman believed the movie's subject—one man's destructive affair with a married woman—was too personal and emotionally draining.

Bergman's reputation has diminished somewhat in recent years, but he is still regarded as one of the great directors, and his films remain among the most widely recognized in the world. Many well-known American directors, such as Woody Allen (1935–), have paid tribute to Bergman in their own films.

Bergman, Ingmar

The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.

Copyright The Columbia University Press

Ingmar Bergman (Ernst Ingmar Bergman) (ĕrnst Ĭng´mär bĕr´yəmän), 1918–2007, Swedish film and stage writer, director, and producer. Acclaimed by many as the greatest director of the second half of the 20th cent., Bergman made about 60 films in all. He achieved an impressive degree of freedom early in his career and used it to create and develop a highly individual approach. Working with many of the same actors and technicians from film to film, his work, usually profoundly serious in theme and treatment, is filled with arresting images and displays an unusual degree of unity and continuity. Bergman made his first film in 1945 and reached his creative zenith as a director in the 1950s and 60s. His 50s films include Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957), and The Magician (1958). In the 60s he made The Virgin Spring (1960, Academy Award) and two trilogies that charted his growing disillusion with humanity's search for God. The first trilogy consists of Through a Glass Darkly (1961, Academy Award), Winter Light (1962), and The Silence (1963); the second of Persona (1965), Hour of the Wolf (1968), and Shame (1968).

In the 1970s Bergman mainly focused his work on domestic issues, dramatized through traumatic, usually unworkable personal relationships, as in the harrowing Cries and Whispers (1972), the stormy Scenes from a Marriage (1974), and the psychological family drama Autumn Sonata (1978). Bergman briefly exiled himself from Sweden after a dispute (1976) with tax authorities, but returned to make his self-proclaimed final, and surprisingly optimistic, semiautobiographical film about family and childhood, Fanny and Alexander (1982, Academy Award).

Having successfully written and directed numerous works for the Swedish theater since the 1950s, he continued to work in theater, television, and opera late in his career. He also wrote autobiographical screenplays adapted from his earlier novels for the films The Best Intentions (1992), directed by Bille August; Sunday's Children (1993), directed by his son, Daniel Bergman; and Private Confessions (1998) directed by Liv Ullmann, who also directed Bergman's Faithless (2000). He also directed a number of classic plays for the Royal Dramatic Theater of Sweden, e.g., Strindberg's The Ghost Sonata (2001). His made-for-television drama Saraband (2003), a bleak epilogue to Scenes from a Marriage, was Bergman's final statement on film.

Bergman, Ingmar

Bergman, Ingmar (1918– ) Swedish film director. With a versatile company of actors and a strong personal vision, Bergman created dark allegories, satires on sex, and complex studies of human relationships. Major films include The Seventh Seal (1956), Wild Strawberries (1957), The Virgin Spring (1960), Persona (1966), Scenes from a Marriage (1974), and The Magic Flute (1975). The intimate and poignant Fanny and Alexander (1983) is considered his finest achievement.

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